My knowledge is based largely on my experiences organizing, canvassing and calling in my central Las Vegas assembly district which, as I've written earlier, is one with high concentrations of the sorts of demographics that generally determine a Democratic primary: older middle-class white Democrats, working-class latino families, union members (including but Culinary and SEIU but also AFSCME, Teamsters (who represent among others library employees!) NSEA (teachers), and a good does of young professionals -- all of which, of course, are overlapping.

So how does it look on the ground here? Over the weekend, I expected to see the turf crawling with canvassers, but we Edwards folk seemed to have our home ground mostly to ourselves. I encountered one Obama field worker, fresh from Iowa, and saw a lot of Obama lit on doorsteps, plus a bunch of new Obama signs, but frankly didn't pick up a great deal of movement towards Obama.

I encountered a lot of support for Clinton, esp from the demographic groups that tend to support her strongly -- older women in Democratic households, gay men who are not political activists (don't ask me; the activists aren't generally for Hillary), every lesbian I know (its a sizeable constituency in my neighborhood) of any age or socio-economic background, and soft support from a lot of Latino households. I definitely saw some pattern of people in all those categories moving from leaning to seeming more solidly for Clinton -- and there were plenty of fresh Hillary signs up Monday morning.

But what I did not get was a strong sense that they are going to caucus for Clinton. I repeatedly was told that they were for Hillary but not sure to caucus. Because I'm a believer in participation,  I urged them to participate and told them where and when but even that didn't seem to spark a lot of interest among a lot of these people.

I have not, frankly, seen much evidence that the Clinton campaign has at this point the voter ID program to find these people and turn them out. But they are working hard on it -- I got several automated voter ID calls yesterday, some that identified themselves for Clinton, some from a local firm that has done work for groups allied with Clinton, and there is out of state Clinton help arriving in the form of both field organizers and from allied groups (on which more later).

And whatever the origins of the suit (on which a bit more below), its clear that the Clinton campaign surrogates, including the President who defended the suit, yesterday hope the fall-out will be to rile people up and make them feel disenfranchised by the at-large precincts, so they will go vote. All the Clinton surrogates on tv yesterday when asked to comment, all hewed to the line that everyone should get to vote, regardless of whether they belong to a union or not. Those who defended the suit also framed it as a defense of the right to vote of those who could not go to the at large caucus sites. As I type, Ann Lewis is on the radio on behalf of the Clinton campaign and in the same breath, defending the suit and urging people to vote.

Of course, the Obama campaign is doing the same thing in reverse -- using it as  a gift to pitch Culinary members, union members generally, working women, hispanics, african-americans as being targeted by "Clintonite, Rove-like tactics." If you want see this done right, check out Culinary leader D Taylor on Hardball last night. He was on the most watched local TV interview show yesterday with Clark County Party chairman John Hunt and just took Hunts' pants off. I so wish he was out making the case for Edwards. Hell, I wish D Taylor was running for President himself.

If you think by the way I'm making up the stuff about the suit making the Clinton campaign look bad, you are not in this state.

So as in IA and NH, its clear that both sides are trying to gin up turnout as they think it will benefit them. And I have no inkling, in all honesty, who is winning that battle. Tonight's debate, with its focus on black and Hispanic issues, could be the turning point that starts to drive those voters to the caucus for one candidate, though I tend to doubt it (in part because its at 6pm local time, to better suit east-coast tv viewers.)

Edwards -- huge energy among staff and volunteers from the poll showing a three way tie. I always disbelieve polls and I know enough to see that a candidate who is not running ads or sending mail (our household yesterday got 3 pieces from Obama, including an 8 page glossy magazine, and two pieces from Clinton plus another AFSCME mailer for Clinton) is going to have a very hard time remaining competitive. Our canvass efforts to deliver the Edwards policy book -- and again, enough can't be said about the Steelworkers -- are the best we can do. (By the way, the books are marked "Iowa" so I make a lemon from lemonade by telling people, "John Edwards doesn't change what he says in Iowa from what he says here.") Edwards will hold a series of town-hall meetings on Wed and Thursday after the debate.

Now, about the suit. I wrote about this the other day and it upset a few people, but the origins of the suit remain baffling. The case that the caucus system is unfair is a solid one and the problem of those who work Saturdays -- or who are disabled or unwell -- is a massive one. However, the suit doesn't ask for -- as the NSEA President alleges -- provisions to allow school janitors to vote; it asks for the delegate formulas at the at-large sites to revised or for those sites to be suppressed.

The case made in the suit is that the formula used to allocate delegates at regular precincts is 2% of registered Dems in that precinct. They argue that the at-large precincts allocate delegates based on roughly 20% of turnout at the precincts. So they argue that the at-large precincts get 10 times the delegates per voter as regular precincts. But that claim is only valid if all the registered Dems in regular precincts turn out; most estimates are for less than 10% turnout, so that the at-large precincts are likely to have a lower delegate to voter ratio than the regular precincts.

Whats so vexing to me, as a longtime party volunteer, and one who worked for and supported the reform slate that won the Clark County e-board elections last summer, is that the Clark County Democratic chairman and two vice-chairs (none of whom are working for any campaign, as I've explained all along) continue to assert that they are bringing this suit entirely to ensure fairness, but will not answer (one of them literally referred me to their lawyer) either how this suit will make the caucus process more fair or why it was brought now, instead of 3 or 6 months when these rules were approved and drafted, respectively.

Its very clear to me that the individuals who are the lead plaintiffs in the suit are being manipulated. The LV Sun yesterday quoted Dan Hart, a local political consultant, saying he had brought the idea to the NSEA, and Lynn Warne, head of the NSEA, said in a separate interview that they did not bring the suit, they were asked to join it.

But the individuals -- Vicky and John Birkland, Dwayne Chesnut, John Cahill and Patricia Montgomery -- simply lack the political connections and personal resources to engage KKBRF (the law firm representing the plaintiffs -- a firm that generally represents the hotels including in their negotiations with Culinary last year.) Interestingly, as of yesterday, calls were being made to other county party activists asking them to join the suit, appealing to their sense of disenfranchisement by the state party. In short, these individuals named above are either lying to everyone they know including me, which I doubt, or they were manipulated into bringing a suit that Dan Hart hatched and the NSEA or someone else agreed to pay for.

A final note of interest that gives you a sense of how "conflict of interest" is synonymous with "standard operating procedure" in Democratic politics here -- the case is being heard by a judge appointed by ...Bill Clinton and nominated by ... Harry Reid. Update: That judge has recused himself. Thanks Steve M.

So now, having done what the party leadership asked, and encouraged all the Dems in my precinct, whichever candidate they support, to attend the caucus; and since there are good number of strip workers in my precinct (including in my family), encouraged them to sign out for break time (which is very limited and for some requires them to go off the clock; these are not workers who are allowed to come and go from the work area as they please) to attend the at-large sites. Now, they hear that the Democratic party is suing to prevent them from going to those sites. What am I supposed to say when I go back to their next fall and ask them to go vote for the Democratic ticket?

Okay so a final note, which will be of particular interest to dp and GeorgeP. Yesterday afternoon, we got a call from a family friend that a NOW staffer from out of state who was coming to campaign for Hillary had no ride or place to stay. I guess all the Clinton campaign staff couldn't be bothered to pick her up. Since my wife couldn't get away from work, I picked her up at the airport, and she stayed over at our place last night. Since the Edwards organizer already has our guest room, we slept on the sofa. So the moral is, when you're failed by public services (actually you can take  a bus from McCarran) and your employer won't take care of what you need (actually she's off the clock from NOW), who do you call? Edwards Democrats!